


thálatta

by disastermovie



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Hurt No Comfort, Last Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 05:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disastermovie/pseuds/disastermovie
Summary: He wants. For home, in England. To be safe in their bed. To be warm again, in John's arms.
Relationships: John Bridgens/Harry Peglar
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38





	thálatta

John kisses Harry's numb fingers and Harry thinks, _I want to go home_.

Harry used to not want things. He was content, even happy, with what he had. Who he had. But he'd also been warm and full, with a place to rest his head, books to fill it, and the privacy of four walls and a lock. He'd had John. He still has John, but he's been so far away despite being right in front of him, and the tent flaps open so easily in the wind. They haven't kissed each other in a century. Harry misses him, in a way that he hates, and he wants so much more than what the world is willing to give.

He wants. For home, in England. To be safe in their bed. To be warm again, in John's arms. He's not cold, not now; he's too tired to be either.

John has held him so much today, more so than he has in weeks. Since carnival, when Harry had stood there with smoke in his lungs and couldn't find him and thought nothing at all, until John appeared and pulled him close and Harry had cried into his neck. He laid but never slept in his arms, in John's bunk, trembling, with only a curtain for privacy. John had still kissed him.

Today, Harry was happy to be held, to wrap his arms around John's neck and breathe him in. To be close as they could be, without being terrified of an audience. He knows that they hadn't been alone then, either, but Harry hadn't cared. He doesn't care. John held him three times today - when he fell, when they made camp, when he lifted him oh so gently onto the cot. Harry's deathbed.

He doesn't want to die. He wants to go _home_. If he can't, then he wants to stay with John. John's going to follow him, Harry knows, and he doesn't want him to. He wants him to go home, if Harry can't do it himself. There are so many things that Harry doesn't want and is getting anyway. Things that he wants and will never have. To be warm. To wake up again, at home. To be held.

It's hard to speak. John cups his cheek and he can feel it. Harry can't feel his fingers or the kisses that John lays on them, but he can feel his face, the warmth of John's palm there, the love in his eyes. There's grief in the way that he says, "What do you need, Harry? Take your time."

Harry needs more time. He needs to live. He needs John, here - but not _here_, at the end of the world. He wants here to be England, in their rooms, with the lamp lit. He wants John to read to him. Harry never finished Xenophon, and he needs to know how how the ten-thousand men did it; how they survived. He needs to know that they did.

It feels like hours to croak the words out, John leaning over him to hear it. "Kiss me?"

John makes a pained sound, choked off and high pitched, in the back of his throat. He kisses him.

Harry tastes salt. The sea.

**Author's Note:**

> > _...and in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting, “The Sea! The Sea!” and passing the word along. Then all the troops of the rearguard likewise broke into a run, and the pack animals began racing ahead and the horses. And when all had reached the summit, then indeed they fell to embracing one another, and generals and captains as well, with tears in their eyes. And on a sudden, at the bidding of some one or other, the soldiers began to bring stones and to build a great cairn._  

> 
> —Xenophon, _Anabasis_ (otherwise known as _The March of the 10,000_)
> 
> This scene is from Book 4, when the 10,000 reach Mount Theches and see the Black Sea, a sign that they're near the Greek cities. In the original Attic Greek, the soldiers shouted, "Thálatta! Thálatta!"
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [diydumpsterdiving](https://diydumpsterdiving.tumblr.com/).


End file.
